CIA Chief's Stand

Published: Saturday, November 14, 1998

IT ISN'T OFTEN that an official who has been appointed to a position of great power and responsibility will threaten to resign over a matter of principle. CIA Director George Tenet did, we are told, in the course of recent U.S.-brokered talks between Israelis and Palestinians. Salute the man.

Mr. Tenet's stand was taken when Israel insisted during Mideast land-for-peace talks in Maryland that the U.S. free convicted spy Jonathan Pollard as part of a settlement deal.

Pollard, a former U.S. naval intelligence officer, is serving a life sentence for having slipped thousands of top-secret American documents to Israel in 1984 and 1985. Many contained information on Soviet missiles and ship movements gleaned by the U.S. through its intelligence system.

Over the years the Jewish state had let it be known that it wanted Pollard's release, but Israeli governments had never pressed the issue - until Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu became pushy about it last month.

At a point in the Maryland talks when it appeared that a Mideast peace deal was looking acceptable to both the Israelis and the Palestinians, Mr. Netanyahu told President Clinton that he wanted the spy to be freed.

CIA people resented Pollard's `betrayal'

That "request" smacked of a squeeze play, putting the United States under pressure to yield something of its own to get Israel to accept Mideast peace terms that were agreeable to Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat.

According to the New York Times, the president consulted with CIA chief Tenet, who had been playing a central but low-profile role in the talks. That was when, according to the Times, Mr. Tenet said he could not agree to the Israeli request and "threatened to resign" if Pollard was to be released.

The White House at first disputed the newspaper's account. On Wednesday, however, the Associated Press quoted an unidentified "Clinton administration official" as saying that Mr. Tenet had told the president that a Pollard release would make it impossible for him to continue as CIA director.

The CIA chief reportedly told Mr. Clinton that the U.S. intelligence community felt so strongly about Pollard's "betrayal" that he could not be seen auiescing to a release.

Mr. Tenet was right on two counts with his no-dice stand:

- Pollard's espionage activities, according to the FBI, caused some of the gravest damage to U.S. security interests in many years. For that he deserves to spend life in prison.

- The CIA needs to be responsive to the counsel and sensitivities of the people who work under him in the intelligence-collection apparatus. Some of them, after all, put their lives on the line in doing what they do.